Rai
by sankontesu
Summary: Rin becomes an adult and decides she's getting bored of village life so embarks on a quest, and encounters a certain wolf-boy along the way.
1. Demon Spawn

**DEMON SPAWN**

 _ **A/N:**_ _Everyone likes to pair older Rin with Sesshomaru or Kohaku, and I got another idea in mind for a ship._

* * *

Her arm was starting to lose feeling, she realized, as she tried in earnest to clot the bleeding going down her wrist with one cold palm held tight against the open wound. She leaned her weight against the mountainside, and held back the impulse to suck her teeth as rocks dug into the sore part of her spine. She doesn't remember where she was, her memory was spotty at best, and she doesn't even recall how she _got_ where she was.

She remembers falling.

She remembers the ground collapsing beneath her and she remembers her head hitting something hard and _alive._

 _That explains the demon then_ , she thought sourly, starting to piece the clues together.

"Come out human, I'm hungry." The voices echoed out of a single being, on large crimson limbs, following her scent to the hidden corner she was situated behind.

She quirked her eyebrow, only half-way amused, if it were not for her state of distress. She felt her stomach flip in on itself and she knew the dizziness was going to result in some vomit pretty soon. She analyzed her choices and felt the faint reminder of her time growing short with each pulsating step that the creature took towards her.

She couldn't run. She'd black out from blood loss and exertion before she got a mile down the hillside, and even then, her blacking out and fainting was the _pleasant_ way to go out. More than likely, the demon would snatch her and rip her apart feasting on her insides the second she had her back turned to him.

And if she couldn't run, and she couldn't climb…

"I'm going to give you 5 seconds to reevaluate your options and walk away before I kill you." She said evenly, her heart pounding wildly in her chest.

The demon hesitated, then a booming roar of laughter shook the earth.

As if on instinct, she freed her hand from the bleeding arm and reassuringly fingered the blades that lay fitted against her calf.

"5…"

Closer now, the stench of the demon's unbearable breath dribbled into her surrounding area.

"4…"

"Human, you will be a delightful snack, I haven't had entertainment and dinner in a _very_ long time."

"3…"

A large slender hand with curved dark red claws extended to her and wrapped around her ribcage tightly, she made sure to keep her wounded left arm clung towards her body to staunch the bleeding again, while keeping the other grasped tightly at the weapons on her right.

She forced out between clenched teeth, "2…"

A pair of red slit eyes peered at her, the jaws of the demon falling open to reveal lines and rows of jagged black teeth.

"1…"

"Human, are you _scared_? Are you ready to _die_?" The demon's echoing multitude of voices slithered into her ears like poisonous insects.

She glared then, her patience running thin.

She is wilderness, she is the wasteland. She smells of blood and pine and sweat.

She is no _human._

"My name is _Rin_ ," She closed her eyes, wrapped her fingers tightly against the spiritual blade, "I have already died _twice_ before-" A warrior's cry ripped from her lips and just before she was to be extinguished, a glowing neon blue enveloped her, purifying the demon's hand and combusting his enormous body one bit after bit. Before the demon could have even realized it, before he could shriek out in agony, and as she fell to the ground, she bellowed at him-

 _"_ _And I am not afraid of you!"_

* * *

 __ _ **A/N**_ _: Obviously she's not a little girl anymore._


	2. Kai

**Kai**

* * *

"I gave him a chance to turn around," She said to no one in particular, letting the snap and pop of the fire to swallow her words as she sat calmly in the glow, "I gave him 5 seconds, and he _laughed_ at me." She shook her head as she wound the material of bandage that Kagome had made for her travels, around her injured arm, and winced, the open flesh was beginning to get tender, "Which is 5 seconds more than Sesshomaru-sama would have given him." She sighed and looked particularly disappointed at the empty space beside her. A crabby green face beckoned and pulled at her memories as she crossed her arms, huddling closer to the warmth of the flames.

It was hard being alone…but she preferred it to being coddled like a child all the time.

 _"_ _Rin, are you sure you don't need one of the girls to go with you?" Miroku worried his brows as they came together in a concerned frown, "It's not safe to be journeying alone, and Kari really needs the practice anyway-"_

 _"_ _Father!" Hikari stomped her feet in sharp denial, "You're just trying to make it so that I don't go to the festival with Hideki."_

 _The monk flashed Rin a sheepish smile, "You'd also be doing me a huge favor in stopping my beautiful daughter from attending any festivities with disrespecting young men."_

 _His daughter gasped dramatically while her twin slipped into the hut with a hand covering her snickering mouth. Hikari's eyes were burning hot coals, "Father, you are UNBELIEVABLE! Of all the ridiculous, outrageously unfair things-"_

 _"_ _It's okay, Kari," Rin started gently, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder for reassurance, "I really don't need the company."_

 _Inuyasha, who for the most part had been quiet in his corner finally lifted his head, "Rin, you're not going alone, so shut up about it already and get the stupid idea of your head."_

 _His wife pretended to drop one of the ceramic cups she had been holding on his head._

 _"_ _H-hey! Kagome!"_

 _She proceeded to shove a pastry into Inuyasha's mouth and stepped in front of him, "Rin, I think as long as you feel ready, you have our blessing."_

Rin sighed and forlornly glanced up at the full moon hanging heavy in the star speckled sky. She hadn't been outside the bordering rim of the village forest in _ages_. The last time she could remember, she was six and every night she dreamed of white-bodied demon dogs that swept her from the floor to the clouds.

Now she dreamed of mundane things, washing the dishes, airing out the beds, or taking a stroll around the town with her new clicky-clacky platform sandals that were all the craze. She tipped her head to the side and decided it would be a good time as any to follow up the idea of dreaming by actually committing to it and sleeping. She made herself comfortable in a bed of soft grass and curled around her bag of survival supplies for the trip. It had taken her half the day to find it after the painful demon distraction, but she had found it. All the ceramic gifts the Inuyasha children had made her lay in shambles at the bottom of the bag, but she carried them anyway.

Her eye-lids grew heavy as she began to close them, and she secretly wished with one last look to the fire that she wasn't so alone…

 _Crack…_

Leaves snapped in the forest similar to the way her eyes snapped open when she heard it, and her hips were below her as she ricocheted straight up off the grass. In a daze she found her feet and although she couldn't have known how much time had passed, the dim embers of the fire and the pitch darkness of the surrounding night, told her it was still scores before daylight would reach the horizon.

On instinct she once again fisted a hand over the silver blade at her side and wished she'd brought her bow.

She fought for that miko sense of yoki vision to come forward, the sense that she had been practicing on for years with Kagome and Miroku, but it was still growing and small, and she could not channel it so quickly after being woken.

She felt the pitiful drip of fear seep into her belly as she inched closer to the dead fire.

 _Crack…_

There.

She turned around, reached back for extra strength, aimed, and released her weapon into the nether of the night.

"Whoa there!"

She blinked, scowled and then reached for another, aiming once more.

"Watch it!" The voice was closer now, brusque and annoyed. Male. She anxiously took one step back and fired up her reiki like a ball of fire forming around her fist.

"I'm going to give you _5_ seconds-"

"And then you'll what?" Another step crunched a handful of leaves on the ground and he sucked his teeth and cursed.

"I'll kill you!"

She waited, but the laughter never came. Just a looming foreboding silence that reached out and coated her in a cold embrace.

The blue glow around the blade at her ear, dimmed, "5…"

" _4_ …" The other voice bated back at her and she almost growled.

"I'm not playing around"

"Then stop counting at me like I'm a damn cub!"

"I'm not counting _at_ you, I'm counting _down_ , and speaking of, I'm now at _3_!"

"What's next? Oh let me guess…it's 2."

"I'm going to kill you." Rin decided but before she could let go of the blade and stick it somewhere between the darkness of the creature's eyes, a whirlwind of dust covered her face and a hard warm hand had wrapped around her wrist.

 _This is why you don't travel alone…_ She could already hear Inuyasha chastising her over her grave.

She gasped. A pair of sharp, pale teal eyes shot straight into her brown ones as the light of the moon cast down on a tanned beautiful face.

In her surprise she had dropped her weapon and the blue glow of her reiki had completely been extinguished. She was, in many ways, trapped and without defense.

But she wasn't dead yet.

"What do you want?" Her voice was gruff from sleep, but her gaze was unflinching.

He didn't answer her, just stayed observing her, his eyes scanning all over features, his nostrils opening to take in her scent.

 _Take in her scent…_

She took in his attire, the fur that draped around his neck like one of the scarfs that Kagome had made everybody when it got cold, the fur that looked identical to the one that…

" _Wolf_!" She hissed in alarm, her eyes shot open wide, and she felt everything inside of her go dead and stone, they were in the middle of Spring but everything around her froze like the numb of Winter, and all her nightmares spilled from her memories, they suffocated her, drowning her in a dread so deep that she couldn't even see the surface from her spot at the bottom of an inky black ocean of despair.

A hand came over her mouth but she couldn't fathom why, until she realized she had been screaming.

"Be quiet!" He harshly whispered at her, his eyes round with shock, "I'm not going to hurt you! Isn't that obvious by now?"

When she had finally stopped making shrill noises, she bit the closest pair of fingers to her mouth, which had until then been light and callous against her lips.

"Hey-what _the fuck_!"

She scrambled down on the floor for her missing blade and cried out in triumph when she found it, turning back around to face him, ready to strike with the glow of her spiritual powers lighting the surrounding area in a violent shade of teal to match her intruder's eyes.

Rin stilled momentarily at the sight in front of her, a tall body, an exposed taut abdomen, and the blades of two muscular hips jutted out from a skirt made of fur. His gray hair was rumpled at the top of his head, hanging by his pointed ears, and a stubble roughened his lean cheeks.

"Go ahead, kid." He stared directly at her. She saw no fear in his eyes, just an empty and endless blue that made her shiver. "Kill me."

"I'm going to give you-"

"You already gave me the 5 seconds, you already told me you're going to kill me, and I'm telling you to go on and do it, stop being a sissy!" The ferocity in his voice chilled her so bad that all she wanted to do was run. He didn't seem to care whether she was armed and ready to destroy him or not. He didn't fear death.

She stood her ground and thought about taking the risk and lowering her weapon, something in the way his face frowned at her reminded her of someone…

"Leave." Rin spit out, not wanting to deal with the nagging memories today.

"Leave?" He rolled his pretty aqua eyes, "This is _my_ territory. _You_ leave!"

"Why do you want me to kill you so bad?" She asked before she could stop herself.

He looked shocked, but it was only momentary, his brows came crashing back together in a frustrated grimace, "Why do you care?"

"I don't."

"Then do it."

She struggled to pull out the energy that kept her blade fueled with spiritual energy but it spiraled away, and soon they were left with only the light of the moon and a useless little dagger. Rin swallowed down the fear that was crawling back, trying to house itself in the uncomfortable corners of her gut.

She chewed on her lip as her chest heaved, "Are you part of Koga's clan?" The wolf demon's name still tore at her insides, but after his and his family's numerous visits to the village, she had trained herself on pushing it back, locking it in a room for safekeeping.

He flinched then, looked away and crossed his arms, "No, I'm solo now."

"Solo?" She parroted. "Why?"

"Shit happens."

She felt no closer to learning of her intruder's reasoning for being at her campsite than she did to knowing what time it was, and she realized scornfully that she couldn't necessarily kill him any longer, unless he made a direct threat to her life.

"Listen," She glanced around for anything to feed the dying fire, at least to have some source of light, but she was having trouble with locating anything in the dark. The moon only seemed to want to illuminate one thing, and he wasn't going anywhere. "I'm planning on moving as soon as daylight hits the sky, so don't worry about me being in ' _your_ '" -she made quotations with her fingers- "territory, okay?"

"What the hell was that?"

"What the hell was what?" She avoided making eye-contact with him and crouched to feel around for a stray piece of wood.

"Your fingers did something stupid."

"I don't know, it's something Kagome does when she's trying to get annoying wolf-demons to go far, far away."

His eyes lit with recognition, "Kagome…"

Rin snapped her face back to him, "You know of her?"

"Yeah, she's the miko…that dog-turd's wife."

Her hands splayed at her hips and she straightened back up, "He's not a dog-turd!"

He breathed a harsh sigh through his nose, "Well that's what Koga called him all the time, sorry, it just stuck."

"Well he's not. And what are you still doing here?"

He glared at her, not wanting to admit that he hadn't a clue.

Truth was, he was patrolling his edge of the forest when he came across bits of tattered boar-demon flesh, splayed around a small perimeter. The boar-demon was a hassle and he had been tracking it for days now, trying to locate it to finish it off himself. It had attacked a neighboring human village and-maybe it was Koga's rearing and strict rule to never harm any humans-but it didn't sit well with him to let the bull-demon continue to ravage about.

At least not around his territory.

He had picked up the scent of a human, bloody and weak, so he tracked it down to a small campsite, expecting to see a soldier, half-dead, and surprised himself when he only saw one thin and shivering woman, twice as much alive as he had assumed.

"I could smell you from miles away, you reek." He flashed her a patronizing look, "You know I'm not the only thing in this forest, and I can bet my raw hide that there's a lot of other demons out here that will gobble you up the second you go back to sleep."

Rin waved dismissively at him and rolled her eyes, "I'm not afraid of them."

He noticed that she was still stumbling around looking for wood, probably for the dead fire, and glanced at a thick piece of the stuff sitting by his foot.

She had probably seen it, there's no way she could have missed it, the way she was staring at him earlier.

"Are you afraid of me?"

She froze, her spine going rigid as she straightened from her position on her knees.

"Nope."

He felt his lips twist in a tiny smirk, recalling the image of a lanky little girl hiding behind a reed of curtains the second him and Koga had touched ground at the miko's village. The human in front of him was taller, the side pony-tail traded in for a high one at the top of her head, but there could be no mistake, "Great, so you don't mind if I take a seat right here, do you? I'm a little bit tired from running around this whole damn forest trying to locate you."

"Why were you looking for me?" She glared honey-brown daggers at him.

"I was looking for a dead body."

"Well," She pursed her lips, "I am very much alive, and so now that you've figured all that out, you're free to go." She shooed him away with her hand.

"What are you doing out here?" He ignored her comment and trained his focus on the delicate curve of her brows, her face morphing into confusion.

"I'm just passing through." She sniffed.

"Aren't you from that village too? Kagome's village?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"Stop being difficult."

"Make me." She bit her tongue before it could stick out between her lips.

He glowered into her petulant face and meant to throw her an insult but he stopped himself. In the past, the energy to offend someone was easy to channel, but nowadays…he couldn't find the drive to care anymore.

Rin saw the light drain from his eyes before he looked away and she sat back on her heels, throwing a hand-full of broken twigs into her little fire and then crouched down on her palms to blow into the still slightly glowing ashes.

When she saw it ignite and start to catch blaze, she gave herself a little pat on the back, "Besides, even if I _was_ from the village, you wouldn't know me." She stated matter-of-fact.

"I know you." The ancient and barren way he said it, struck a nerve somewhere in the bottom of her belly and she turned quickly to look at him in surprise.

"What?" She breathed, her heart doing the strange fluttering thing it did when she was scared, except this time she wasn't scared.

She was sitting an arm's length away from a wolf-demon,but the fear was sinking away, a rising tide of confusion and curiosity lingering in her mind.

The light of the newly resurrected fire played gently on his face, the sizzle and pop of the its flames echoed out into the night, and he finally fixed his gaze back on her from where he was staring at the ground.

"You're Rin."

* * *

 **A/N:** _Why do I continue to do this to myself, who's even going to read this omg lol. Why._


End file.
